


Statement of Carmen Sandiego, regarding her time under The Hunt

by SomeChaosSpinner



Series: Red hat under green eyes: Carmen Sandiego/TMA AU [1]
Category: Carmen Sandiego (Cartoon 2019), The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Crossover, F/F, One Shot, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-18 09:08:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28989744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SomeChaosSpinner/pseuds/SomeChaosSpinner
Summary: Statement of Carmen Sandiego, regarding her time under The HuntStatement recorded 2020, march 20th, direct from subjectTMA/CS crossoverSort of inspired by OliverTheLongFurbyTW for semi-goreOriginally posted on my WattpadI wrote this in transcript style because ah... I wanted to
Relationships: Julia "Jules" Argent/Carmen Sandiego | Black Sheep
Series: Red hat under green eyes: Carmen Sandiego/TMA AU [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2199588
Comments: 6
Kudos: 10





	Statement of Carmen Sandiego, regarding her time under The Hunt

**Author's Note:**

> -At this time, Jules has been aware she's an avatar for some time now  
> -Maybe a oneshot? I'm going to expand more on this crossover and maybe in the same timeline but for now, this is it  
> -Carmen is an avatar of the hunt, she's looking for clues about her parents and struck an uneasy truce with the insitute to be able to look through the archives  
> -Chase, Ivy, and Zack are archival assistants  
> -Julia is the archivist  
> -Not really important for this, but Chief is the head of the insitute

Julia:  
Zack said he moved Dexter Wolfe’s file into- oh.

Sounds of scrambling and dropped files.

Julia (regaining composure):  
...hello. I didn’t realize anyone else came back here.

Carmen:  
I don’t think anyone comes back here except for me most of the time. …Chase came back here last week and I could hear him checking every file I put back down to make sure nothing was removed.

(Julia offers a small laugh.)

Julia:  
That’s Chase. I don’t think we’ve met?

Carmen:  
Ah… Carmen. You knew that already.

Julia:  
Julia. I’m the archivist. ...you knew that already.

(Pause.)

Julia:  
...Let me just… I’m looking for Dexter Wolfe’s file. Have you seen it?

Carmen:  
I don’t think so. I haven’t checked that shelf yet, though.

Julia:  
Thank you. (Pause.) What are… what are you looking for, if I may ask?

Carmen:  
Sigh. I don’t know. I keep hoping I’ll know it when I see it? Maybe something recorded from other avatars? Or members of the hunt? (Pause.) Something about my parents?

Julia:  
What were… your parents’ names?

Carmen:  
I… don’t know.

Julia:  
You never heard other people talk to them?

Carmen:  
I’m afraid not.

Julia:  
...what were they like, then? What did you know?

Carmen:  
Well… (slight shift in tone)  
There’s an old poem. I don’t remember exactly what it said, but there was a line, something like “Face of stone and eyes duller.” That was my parents. They were quiet, reserved. Didn’t talk much to me. They didn’t even really talk to each other. They were just… stone.  
Except when they talked about the hunt. About the entities. About the history of this… this place, and the beings that had come here and made statements.  
My parents were obsessed with Smirke’s fourteen. Recited it. Their eyes always lit up when they got to the hunt- the supernatural manifestation of the fear of being chased. It’s kind of ironic that I was… it chose me, because sometimes it felt like I was being chased by the legacy of my parents, constantly trying to escape it in the neighborhood, on the bus, at school. My parents were the neighborhood recluses, and I was the recluses’ child. Their only child. They always talked about me like that. Their only child. I was the only one they were able to have, so I was the unfortunate heir to a “responsibility” I didn’t want. To bring the hunt into the mortal realm. On some level, to be the hunt.  
I don’t know how much my neighbors knew about what was happening. Not enough, clearly, if no one had shown up yet to pull me into the other room and ask some “questions” from an official formatted pamphlet in an official sounding tone with an official looking face.  
So, anyway, I was an outcast at school. Until they pulled me out, in fifth grade, in favor for a “richer” education to be achieved at home.  
Maths were taught about the same, although my parent’s disdain for more complex equations was clear. History was different. It was all about Jonah Magnus, and the magnus archives, and, of course, smirke’s fourteen.  
Science was… definitely a richer education than what my schoolmates were still learning while I was at home, reciting all the ways fear could alter reality. I didn’t learn about growing Sweet Pea flowers or measuring snowfall or writing hypotheses. I learned about biology. All the places that you could make someone bleed the most, so that they’d be reduced to an empty husk before their screaming could reach anyone in time. All the ways you could grab a bone and snap it.  
All the ways you could silence a voice.  
It was about two years into my homeschooling that my parents started taking me out into the woods. Always late at night, always deep into the forest. We lived far down the road from anyone else, in a bit of an isolated patch close to the treeline, but we went very, very far away from anyone else’s prying eyes, the farthest I had ever gotten from anyone else’s glance. Except for my parents, watching me eagerly as they handed me a knife and pointed toward a hollow tree.  
They told me to climb up to the opening, about ten feet from the ground. I’ve never been afraid of heights, so I did, with a bit of struggling around the places where the branches became too thin to support my weight.  
Then I jumped down into the inside of the tree.  
A nest of owls. One mother, about a foot tall, opened its beak and hissed at me, as her three babies looked on, nestled in with two other unhatched eggs.  
(Shaky breath)  
I knew what my parents wanted me to do, then. A calm settled over me. As if I was watching myself in a dream.  
I killed every last bird.  
The mother’s talons dug into my back and arms and legs, and I was a bleeding mess by the end, covered in scratches which would leave scars, but when I dropped down from the top of the tree, my parents beamed at me.  
We didn’t go to a doctor, of course. I probably should have. Probably should have gotten stitches. Probably should have treated that infection. But my parents would have had to explain what happened, and I think over the next few years I began to grasp that going into the woods with my parents every night and killing the first dangerous thing I saw was abnormal and very, very illegal.  
My parents loved it, though. After I could navigate the woods more easily, they began to branch off to chase their own prey, and I could hear their thrilled yelps almost drowning out the screams of their victims.  
...I think some of them might have been people.  
Eventually, I became fully desentized to the blood. The first night, after the pain had faded, I cried, thinking about the terrified faces of the chicks as they screeched at me in a way that could have been begging for their lives.  
But after a few months, i didn’t even think about it. I began to enjoy it, even. It made me feel strong, capable. That stays with me now.  
(Pause, then a deep breath)  
If I killed you here, broke your spine and watched life leave your eyes once the breath was gone from your lungs, would I even care?  
…  
…sorry. I… I think you can see a bit of what it was like.  
Years passed. We never celebrated my birthday. I knew what day it was on, of course. Back then. I don’t think I do now.  
I don't think my parents didn’t celebrate birthdays because they didn’t care about me, exactly. They definity cared about me.  
Their eyes were always on me throughout the years. I began to despise being watched, despised how they would go through my things and think they were being discreet as they opened books and flipped through journals. They weren’t. I always knew what had been disturbed, what had been moved, what had been taken. I started to feel like a sample on a microscope, a test subject. It’s funny, looking back, because I think I was. I think my parents were trying to get the hunt to notice me.  
I think they watched me so much because they wanted to know if the hunt would accept me.  
And if it didn’t, they wanted to be the first to claim the prey.  
The only reason I didn’t completely snap, the only reason I’m not tearing open throats right now, is because I made a friend.  
I never knew his name. He was in the woods one day, examining the mutilated carcass of a dead deer.  
I never told him that the reason the horns were torn away from the rest of the skull was because my parents had taken them as a trophy the night before. I never figured out what they did with the prizes, but I always saw them take them.  
He was… interested in my life. Even better, he didn’t know who I was. We talked in the woods, just met up and talked about whatever. He would talk about his own homeschooling. I never talked about mine. I always just told him I went to “a school” and we left it at that. This shared secrecy, him about his name and mine about… most of my life, was the closest thing to a bond I’d ever had with another human being before.  
Then my parents cut that bond.  
They found out, obviously. I’d thought that the centimeter wide space between my bedframe and the mattress, where the frame bent down under its own weight and left a very small gap, was a good hiding place for my journal. It was for a while. But I guess one day, my parents came in, and they found it.  
I had written pages about our adventures in exploring the woods, the time we went downtown, and what he told me about his family.  
And they used that and tracked down his family to teach me a lesson about betraying mine.  
They set him loose in the woods and told me to find him. Use my training.  
Then do what I did to all of my prey.  
That time, the atmosphere was different. The moon was full. I could hear wolves, moving through the woods, communicating through howls and yips and yelps.  
My senses were so sharp.  
And I realized something, as I looked at my parents’ dead serious faces, waiting for this to be one of those jokes they’d never told, hands tightening around my knife.  
I was so hungry.  
I didn’t realize exactly what that hunger was that night. I realized years later. And then I tried to figure out how to fix it.  
I’m still trying.  
[Statement ends]  
(Carmen lets out a long breath. So does Julia.)  
(There’s silence for a moment.)

Julia:  
…Uh… right. Did you-

Carmen (voice tight):  
Jules.

Julia:  
What… oh! Oh. …god. I’m so sorry. I… didn’t realize I was… watching.

Carmen:  
It’s-it’s… just… I… I suppose I get it.

(Pause)

Julia:  
So the file. I’ll- I’ll go look for it. Good luck with… knowing what you’re looking for.

Carmen:  
You too.  
(Pause)  
Could you turn that off, please?

Julia:  
Of course.

(The audible click of the tape recorder being turned off)  
[Recording ends]


End file.
